Community Development gets a lot of different definitions, the blog title gives you mine. Together with my family, living in central Asia, I work with a NGO in a CD project that works toward objectives of improving water, sanitation, hygiene, infant and maternal health, and agriculture for poor communities. I am not an expert in any of these fields, I'm the guy that trains and supports the national leaders and facilitators of the project, and makes sure that we are actually facilitating change

Sunday, January 26, 2014

MZ irrigation pictures update

Yesterday I was in MZ village and grabbed a few updated pictures of the irrigation project. I had not been there for over a month, so it was exciting to finally see how things wrapped up before the snow came (which has now melted), and how the community were feeling about the completion of the pipeline.

This is the completed check dam and ditch that feeds the settling reservoir. It looks real good.

Here's the reservoir with it's lid on. The first air vent is also pictures (brown pipe beyond the reservoir standing 1 meter tall). There are four air vents that make sure the up-and-down pipe has the best gravity water flow possible.

Here's the view from down the valley. The white gate in the ditch is a small measure to protect the reservoir from flooding.

Below is the suspended valley crossing. The suspended pipe is 42 meters long!

Two men from the village with my staff member who is most technically-inclined (and technically-daring! He's willing to try anything, so I am usually raining him in with safety considerations, i.e. wear a mask when you weld, only do dynamiting when the work crew retires for the day, use a safety cable when winching the bridge into place, etc.)

The foundations that the suspension cables went over were not perfectly true, but they are doing the trick.

Here is air vent #3, which cycles through blowing air and water until the pipe is completely full from beginning to end. It takes about 18 hours for the 800 meter pipe to completely fill and flow well after a shut-off and repair.

This is the end of the pipe for now. The community is eager to build a reservoir at this location in the spring. The best flow we have had so far is 2.6 liter per second from this 2-inch pipe. We are hoping to improve the venting or intake in order to get the full 4 liters per second that we planned for. I wish I knew more about hydrology!

I had tea with the 104-year-old (or so he claims) elder of the village, and was pleased to hear him say, "I've lived here all my life and there has never been water here before. Now look at the water flow, and look at the new potential for growth here." Here is one of his grandsons collecting water for his mother to wash clothes and dishes with.